Thomizing Plotinus: A Critique of Professor Gerson

Abstract

Recent years have seen a welcome surge in Plotinian scholarship. One of the latest full-length presentations of Plotinus' philosophy is L. P. Gerson's Plotinus in the Arguments of the Philosophers series.' It is a work of impressive erudition and scholarship. However think is seriously flawed due to Gerson's failure to take account of the intellectual milieu of the late Roman Empire. A priori one might suppose that some light could be shed on the Enneads by trying to understand Plotinus in the context of contemporary movements of thought Gnosticism, Middle Platonism, Neopythagoreanism, Christianity but there is almost none of this in Gerson's Instead we have an attempt to force-fit Plotinus into the intellectual world of thirteenth century Scholasticism. Thomas Aquinas is cited more frequently than any other thinker except Plato and Aristotle. It is this ahistorical approach that want to criticize in more detail in the pages that follow. To be sure, Gerson anticipates this sort of criticism. In the first place, he admits, I have kept mostly silent about some very exotic topics, such as magic, astral bodies, and guardian angels, which undoubtedly do have some place in a complete picture of Plotinus as a thinker. do not, though, think they have a place in a philosophy book, or at any rate a contemporary philosophy book. (xvii) Below, however, we will find reason to doubt that these topics can always be disassociated from ones that do have a place in a philosophy As for any imputation of scholastic anachronism, Gerson argues, it is really beside the point if that language accurately elucidates what is going on in the arguments. claim that does. (9) Below hope to show that doesn't.